Crash.Net User: Jack Mordino

Marquez should be thanking Rossi. He received tutoring at the highest level, and the lesson was that you cannot go about racing 240+hp motorcycles pushing everyone around to win without having some of the consequences return to yourself. Hard racing is one thing, what Marquez does is another.

999666GP15: It's clear Honda doesn't want Stoner to disturb MM's championship run clearly Stoner wouldn't win races straight away but it's possible he could take points away from MM later on and a possible clash of titans isn't what Honda wants. What a shame!

Exactly... and not only this but it also proves that they only have little true faith in Pedrosa. It's clear that they see him as the perfect No2 man: Not a real threat to the frontrunner Marquez but good enough to pretend to be a contender, occasioanally fiddle with opposition and grab points from them and even if he fails that, at least not be a disgrace to the factory.
Honda... the ever clever fox they are... how I dsepise their empire-type thinking and conduct - Crutchlow spoke of the orchestrated team-order thing just in the last race.
All this made me remember once again why I consider Rossi's slap to leave them and make their rivals world champions as a class act of the highest order, and then s

About Stoner: It's not black and white people. A multitude of factors contribute to a certain outcome.
What Stoner did and was special, was the fact that apart from 2007 when he had an undisputable tyre advantage, throughout 2008-2010 he managed to keep the Ducati and himself in the spotlight, and occasionally -if not frequently- win races with it. Nobody else managed that with that obvious pig of a bike. Everybody else didn't manage good results and got disheartened by it, including Rossi who on an MCN interview admitted: "I don't know how Stoner did it".
Even Nakamoto, HRC boss, confessed, after Stoner's departure, that Marquez is extremely talented but not a genius like Stoner.
Of course this doesn't mean that I am a fan of his or that I have any particular liking - to be honest I dislike his personality and I was kind of glad when he left because I was tired of all the bullspit his fans used to launch.

cossiegaz: Don't really understand what that plan was all about. Cal Crutchlow and Honda deciding that Cal would "let" Marquez go and then just catch him up at the end?

Basically what they told him was to help Marquez by taking advantage of his good grid position and try to slow down the Yamahas so that Marquez could build up a sufficient time advantage before his tyre started showing degradation. The "catch up later" part was to not make him feel bad about it

bikenutter: I'm going to get a whole bunch of hate for this but I think Marquez's pace is still miles ahead of Rossi (and the rest of the field). In Qatar he ran wide and in Argentina they chose the wrong tyre. I think the only way Rossi can win this year is if MM keeps having issues/making mistakes.

On the whole you might be right but regarding Argentina, there was this interview (I think it was Marc) where he conceded that they knew they didn't have the pace to match the Yamahas on the same tyres (extra hard) so they opted for the hard in a bid to break away and then try to manage a gap, probably hoping that Rossi's grid position would hamper him in closing-in to Marc. Cal's "team orders" also support this.

My heart is still pounding. I couldn't watch it sat on my bum. Rossi was beyond words - he reminded me of an old saying there is in my country: "the old chicken is the one with the juice."
And Marquez... had it coming. It would only take so long before his ultra-aggressive style would turn against him.
Dovizioso impressive again, Crutchlow really good... Lorenzo... (?) and the Suzuki did pretty good.
If these first races are accurate indication of what is to follow, this year will be gold, one of those to remember.

If Rossi doesn't start well and warm-up practice shows that he has the pace to be a frontrunner then it will be a dangerous combination for him. History has shown that a stressed-out Rossi is a prone to mistakes Rossi and he is never as stressed as feeling he has to be at the front but instead being held-back by slower riders.

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